The phenomenon of domestic violence

The phenomenon of domestic violence
Author: Ms. Diana Sanz. Psychologist. Specialist Child abuse and child sexual abuse. Director of Home for Adolescent Mothers and Supervisor of the telephone line "I help you" orientation, containment and referral of Child and Adolescent abuse; services of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires | e-mail: diana_sanz@hotmail.com


Certainly violence is a phenomenon that is part of our everyday experiences in the most diverse circumstances. It is an invisible presence that colors many of our everyday experiences, and causes intense feelings. News reports about robberies, murders or rapes, more subtle forms of abuse suffered in the workplace, an insult street. The different forms of violence to which invisibly and even in a "naturalized" usually suffer personal emotional resonate in each of us. The violence itself takes specific forms of appearance according to the contexts in which it states: social, political, economic, family, etc. Violence within the family (violence against women, abuse of parents towards their children, adult children abuse their elderly parents), not a problem neither modern nor recent, on the contrary has been a feature of life family since ancient times. It is only recently beginning to become aware as a phenomenon very serious and damaging the health of the population and the social fabric.


Recognition of the phenomenon is due to many factors, first, the family has ceased to be a private haven impassable, subject to the internal decisions and the authority of one who governs. The global state policies tend to comprehensive protection of the family and the members who compose it, the authority of "paterfamilias," has declined, they have changed the position of women in society and the child is considered a subject of rights . The neutrality of public power away to circumstances that endanger the integrity of people in the family. Safeguarding the domestic intimacy does not preclude support or help from the community. For that one must know the issues and problems affecting family dynamics. has struggled very hard to run the idyllic image that carried the concept of family, and that obscured the recognition of aberrant acts committed within it.


We can say that although throughout history the family has been conceived as a place of "refuge, repose and wellness for individuals who compose it; basic cell affective shaping individuals, gives them ownership and helps form subjectivity and learn social reciprocity "also carries nuclei generate violence and authoritarianism that go against the individual.


Why deal with family violence?. Once we dispel the myth of "peace familar," we are confronted with some facts. The clinical observation, empirical research, news reports, and newsletters, we describe painful violence between spouses, adult children to their care, and elderly dependents in the family. All these events have increased public awareness and have forced us to recognize that violence within the family is a common phenomenon in our modern society that crosses all socioeconomic and cultural levels. In fact, people are more likely to be killed, physically assaulted, beaten, slapped or sexually abused in their own homes by their own families, than in any other place or any other person in society. Some realities of data from other countries put us in tune with the magnitude of the problem.


News of Great Britain based on police records and court show that 42% of murders including "domestic disputes" and a third of the victims of domestic violence are children. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (UK) reports that three to four children die every week abused by their parents. In the U.S., approx. 40% of homicides are the result of violence within the family. The homicide rate caused by domestic violence is similar to USA (40%), the United Kingdom (42%) and Australia (44%).


Similar but unofficial figures are handled in Latin American countries. This complex reality makes our social system inadequately prepared to relieve the suffering of the victims and their families. All disciplines involved in the detection, intervention, and treatment (medicine, education, social services, justice services, mental health) do not have adequate training and specific. Social policies do not respond to the emerging realities. The health and social services, criminal justice system and civil deal with the problem without adequate monitoring and technical incompetence of assigned personnel. The community at large experience alienation, confusion and lack of basic information about how to work the various network services and their interdependence.


The Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy says that "violate" is "the application of media on people or things to overcome their resistance." This has defined violence as "the use of force, open or concealed, in order to obtain an individual or a group they do not want to consent freely," and according to the Council of Europe, domestic violence is defined as "Any act or omission done within the family by one of its members, to affect the life or physical or psychological, or even the freedom of one of its members, which causes serious damage to the development of his personality ".


Thus understood, violence is always a form of exercise of power through the use of force (whether physical, psychological, economic, etc.) and implies the existence of an "up and down", real or symbolic. The use of force "is, therefore, a possible method of intrapersonal conflict resolution as an attempt to break the will of the other, cancel precisely in its capacity as" other. " The violence involves a search to remove obstacles to the exercise of power by controlling the ratio obtained through the use of force "(Jorge Corsi, Family Violence, 1995). For possible violent behavior has to be an imbalance of power, which can be defined culturally or context or interpersonal maneuvers produced by control of the relationship.


Why is Family Violence?. The family as a social organization is organized hierarchically according to principles that vary historically. But there is one that has remained stable over the centuries: that of the hierarchical structure depending on the age and the system of "gender". That is, culturally held beliefs and values ​​about the behavior of men and women, relationships between them and the characteristics of the sexes. Evaluative considerations about what is predominantly male and female, determines social models on the place of man, women, relationships within the family, instead of the children.


This will make implicit assumptions underlying the family organization, and governing the distribution of power among its members. Some of these culturally implicit assumptions are:
1) The family is organized into hierarchies of unequal power between men and women.
2) The inequality comes from a biological arrangement between the sexes that gives superiority to man.
3) Women are bound to have maternal functions beyond their reproductive capacity.
4) Is this natural condition that gives them the features of weakness, passivity and sensitivity.
5) Men dominate nature by means of intrusion, the action and force.
There is another set of implicit assumptions that govern the relationships with their children, legitimating "socioculturally violent actions toward them:
a) Children are privately owned by the parents.
b) Acceptance of the use of physical punishment as an educational method.
c) Everything that happens within the four walls of the home is the exclusive concern of the private sector.
According to some authors, the degree of potential violence in a family is given by:
I) The degree of verticality of the family structure,
II) The degree of rigidity of hierarchies,
III) Beliefs about the obedience and respect,
IV) Beliefs about the value of discipline and punishment, V) Degree of adherence to gender stereotypes,
VI) The degree of autonomy of the members.
All these assumptions implicit social consensus, correspond to an authoritarian model of family, where respect is not understood as reciprocity among members, but is defined from a vertical power structure. The dependence of the weakest to the strongest is reinforced, and autonomy is a right not recognized equally for all members of the family system.